Episode 92: Demon Child

Riding on through the black forest, Guts questions the Skull Knight about carrying him twice, and the knight admits he was the one who pulled him from the otherworldly ground of the Eclipse, calling himself an enemy of the inhuman. He reveals he never knew of Guts' bond with Godot and Erica, having simply left him with the nearest settlement, and notes that the surrounding peaks once held elves whose lingering trace keeps the ore cave free of spirits. The rare elf dust used to heal Guts leads the knight to wonder whether the mercenary shares some tie to that vanished folk.

When Guts asks why Casca could be in danger from so safe a refuge, the knight answers that she must have wandered out of the mine, since the dead gather wherever sunlight fails. Reaching a clearing, they find Casca on a rise ringed by spirits that, strangely, make no move to harm her. Guts ignores the knight's caution and rushes to her, finding her shirt soaked and bloodied where the Brand over her heart weeps in the spirits' presence.

Casca drops to her knees clutching her belly, and blood runs from between her legs before a tiny, dark, fetal creature slips from her body onto the ground. She has given birth, but to no ordinary child. When the thing opens its single eye at him, Guts moves to crush it, only for Casca to shield it with her body. The Skull Knight explains that her sacrifice was already pregnant when a demon violated her, corrupting the unborn.

Guts understands that the night before the Eclipse, when he and Casca lay together, he fathered the child Femto's assault has since deformed. As he grapples the rapidly swelling infant away from her, it fastens onto the blood of her Brand, and Casca fights savagely to reclaim it. Dawn breaks and the creature turns translucent and fades from his hands, leaving Casca wailing for it. The knight observes that the child has not truly ceased to exist and will return, drawn to its parents.

Spanning twenty-one pages in Young Animal issue 23 on November 22, 1996, this Golden Age Arc chapter introduces the Demon Child born of Guts and Casca. As Rickert and Erica arrive, the departing Skull Knight leaves two lessons: the Brand will steer Guts toward the demons he hunts because it answers to evil, and to pursue evil he must be willing to take it into himself.